Explaining Hollywood, Part Ten

SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.

BIGWIG: We have had an excellent run this year, gentlemen. One, I was certain we had drained the Adam Sandler well dry, but your bottomless pit of imagination showed us that there is still much more for Adam Sandler to do.
FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: He can be a man and a lady! I have plans for him to show up in a romantic comedy next as the girl!
THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: That is a terrible idea.
BIGWIG: But potentially profitable, and therefore not entirely terrible. Two, you too have used Adam Sandler to best advantage with the success of Just Go With It.
SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I liked it better with my original title, Let’s Both Lie So I Can Get Sex.
THIRD: Two fun facts: firstly, you bastardized a movie called Cactus Flower that actually won Oscars in order to make that movie, and second, you are a terrible person.
SECOND: Hey! I did not steal the plot from that cactus movie! I never even saw whatever it is you’re talking about!
BIGWIG: But it made a lot of money. And Three – I have to admit, even I wasn’t expecting a lot out of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and now we’re going to be able to sequelize it. And you even managed to do it without Adam Sandler.
FIRST: I think it would have made double the money if Adam Sandler had been the chimpanzee leader and thrown poop at James Franco. People love it when monkeys throw poop! Especially at James Franco.
BIGWIG: In any case, we must look ahead to 2012. Gentlemen, I want us to consider the public domain. I am tired of paying six dollars and ninety-five cents for the rights to a toy marketed in the 1980s that has kitsch collector value. That is six dollars and ninety-five cents that could be going in my pocket instead. What ideas do you have, crack junior executives?
SECOND: Where?
THIRD: He used “crack” as an adjective.
SECOND: I knew that! We all knew that! Nobody can prove anything!
FIRST: I vote we do The Three Bears, starring Kevin James as Papa Bear, Melissa McCarthy as Mama Bear, and that weird guy who is thirty-two but looks like he is fifteen and has a TV show as Baby Bear.
BIGWIG: Fairy tales? Do go on.
FIRST: Or we could do a movie where the hero is Aspirin and he’s fighting the evil Gingivitis.
THIRD: I don’t think that quite works.
FIRST: Maybe they’re heroic dragons in human form! Except for Gingivitis, who is an evil dragon sorcerer.
BIGWIG: This interests me.
THIRD: Think of the CGI budget.
BIGWIG: You have a point, Three. I am less interested now. Let’s talk about the bears one again.
SECOND: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Look: fairy tales are bloody and dirty and about unpleasant human urges put into story form to make them slightly more palatable to children. The bears thing is destined to flop because it is about none of those things. There need to be tits and murder.
BIGWIG: That is an uncannily astute observation coming from you, Two.
THIRD: He said the same thing about the Teletubbies last week.
BIGWIG: Stopped clocks, Three. So, what fairy tale can we make both sexy and violent?
THIRD: Well, the obvious choice is “Snow White,” which has generational mother-daughter competitive jealousy, a huntsman who does some violent things, and a handsome prince. There’s probably a solid “adult” version to be made there – a little more fantastic than Ever After, the Cinderella retelling, and a little more grounded than Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
FIRST: No, no, you’re going about it all wrong! The Queen should be grumpy and funny! And the charming prince should be all dorky so he is lovable! Like Adam Sandler! Except maybe better looking, because Adam Sandler is kinda ugly. And the dwarves should be all wacky! And they should have catchphrases and talk like rappers do!
THIRD: Well, I think –
SECOND: No, no, no. First off, the Queen should be played by a total bombshell, like Charlize Theron. And then we get Kristen Stewart to play Snow White because teenagers love Kristen Stewart, and we get the guy who was Thor to be, like, Thor. Except we can’t call him Thor.
THIRD: But the entire point of “Snow White” is that it’s about maternal jealousy of the daughter. Charlize Theron is beautiful. How are we supposed to believe that she envies Kristen Stewart? I mean, Kristen Stewart is good looking, but she’s not your classic supermodel type and Charlize Theron, well, is.
FIRST: This is exactly why we need to have the Queen be played by Julia Roberts with a fake nose so she is ugly.
THIRD: And we’re back going too far in the other direction again.
SECOND: Look, if we do it my way we can have awesome swordfights.
FIRST: Well, I say we can have awesome swordfights too! With puns and fencing and so on!
SECOND: No, this needs to be less Princess Bride and more Braveheart. Snow White can lead an army of soldiers against the evil Queen, who… I dunno, is a vampire or something? And then Thor can help kill her.
THIRD: Why do we need Thor in this movie again, which is supposed to be about a female protagonist?
SECOND: I’m sorry, I thought we were in the business of making hit movies, which are predominantly watched by teenaged boys.
BIGWIG: Well said, Two.
SECOND: Besides, we’ll need him for the eventual threeway sex scene with Snow White and the Queen.
BIGWIG: Less well said, Two, and this comes from someone only slightly concerned with traditional narrative.
SECOND: Does this mean my all-dwarf gangbang is out?
BIGWIG: Need I remind you that we do not make pornography at this studio?
SECOND: No.
BIGWIG: And why don’t we make pornography at this studio?
SECOND: “Because the internet has killed off pornography’s profitability for the foreseeable future.”
BIGWIG: Thank you.
FIRST: It doesn’t matter because my idea is much, much better. I think we need love potions. And a dance sequence. And pop culture references! And Nathan Lane turning into a cockroach!
THIRD: But none of that makes any sense –
FIRST: It doesn’t have to make sense because it’s magic!
BIGWIG: He has a point there. Therefore, we will make One’s Snow White movie. We will get Julia Roberts and Nathan Lane and one of those actors we’re currently trying to convince America is the next Tom Cruise. I don’t know which one and it doesn’t matter. Pick somebody off last year’s GQ covers and tell him to be charming.
THIRD: Armie Hammer?
BIGWIG: He’ll do. And we’ll use actual little people for the dwarves. We will use every famous dwarf and midget in Hollywood.
THIRD: Peter Dinklage?
BIGWIG: No, he would cost actual money. I meant the famous dwarves that nobody really cares about.
SECOND: I think this is a mistake. We’ve already done kiddie, family-friendly versions of fairy tales before. We’ve done them over and over again. We even did meta already. Remember Enchanted? That sucked.
THIRD: It was critically acclaimed and made over three hundred million dollars worldwide.
SECOND: But we didn’t see Amy Adams’ tits even once. I consider that a failure for all humanity.
BIGWIG: Two also has a point – about the film, not Amy Adams. Therefore, I have decided that we will also make Two’s Snow White movie. It will have battle scenes and be sort of Gothy in the way that teen films sometimes try to pretend that they are rebellious and experimental, but will ultimately have a safe core to it. And, to make the critics happy, we’ll cast good actors to be the seven dwarves. Probably British ones.
THIRD: I assume we’re not making three Snow White movies.
BIGWIG: Don’t be ridiculous.

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